Winchester and London were omitted from Domesday Book altogether--an omission which was repaired, as far as Winchester is concerned, in Henry I.’s reign, when the Winchester Domesday Book, as it was called, was compiled. Needless to say, Domesday Book was merely the popular name for it; its real name was the _Rotulus Wintoniensis_, or Book of Winchester, sometimes termed _Rotulus Regis_ or King’s Book. Domesday Book was kept at Winchester, and a copy of it at Westminster. The original is now in the Rolls Office. It is certainly noteworthy that Winchester should have given birth to the two most valuable records of national history which this country has ever possessed, two records which no other nation can find any parallel to, viz. the English Chronicle and the Domesday Book. The value of the latter is that it gives us in absolutely unquestionable form the raw material of history, unwarped by personal bias, uncoloured by tradition. By means of it we can put to exact test many of the time-honoured statements, accepted for generation after generation without question or demur, and in that fierce crucible many and many a legendary tradition treasured hitherto as current historical coin, has been melted down and revealed as a spurious token merely. Such a one we probably have in the story already related of Abbot Alwyn and the monks of Newan Mynstre; the story of the afforestation of the New Forest is another. But the New Forest, though local, is rather beyond our scope: the reader is referred to the fuller volume on Hampshire for a discussion of this topic: and, indeed, the story of Norman Winchester is full enough as it is--replete with many a thrilling scene, many a notable historical figure. William himself, strong, stern, far-seeing and determined, a leader among men, towering head and shoulders above his contemporaries, capable of cruelty, hard and grasping, indeed, as were all who strove to rule in those stern days, but never small or moved by petty spite. “He nothing common did or mean,” might almost be said of him. And side by side with him, Lanfranc the Italian, smooth, supple, astute--like William, a master mind, a great man, but with the greatness of the ecclesiastical statesman rather than of the saint or even the scholar; and in sharp contrast Walkelyn the Norman, the high-minded, the conscientious, the ascetic--a scholar and a devotee rather than a statesman; and after these a host of minor personalities, striking and interesting enough, too, in their way. Foremost among these stands Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, son of the great Siward, Earl of Northumbria. A picturesque and pathetic figure he is, with certain virtues and high qualities all unfitted for his time.